6 Nigerian-led Startups Get $100k From Google’s $2m Black Founders Fund
6 Nigerian-led startups get $100k from Google’s $2m Black Founders Fund
Six Nigerian-led startups are among 30 with black founders that Google has selected to receive funding from its $2 million Black Founders Fund. These businesses will receive cash and advertising credits, as well as networking and mentoring opportunities with the Google team. Each of the companies is headquartered in Europe.
The 6 Startups
MoveMeBank, Define, Circuit Mind Limited, Contingent, HomeHero, and Playbrush are six startups with founders and co-founders of Nigerian descent. However, only MoveMeBack has a female co-founder, while the other five all have male co-founders.
MoveMeBack was founded by Oyin Solebo. She co-founded the startup with Solebo and Charles Sekwalor in 2014. Through its platform, it connects people to individuals and opportunities they might not have access to otherwise. The overarching goal of the London-based startup is to connect talent with Africa in order to accelerate the continent's development.
Circuit Mind was founded by Tomide Adesanmi. Adesanmi and Basilio Gentile, who serves as Chief Technology Officer, founded the company in 2018. Using Circuit Mind's software, engineering teams can produce higher-quality circuits more quickly and with fewer errors. It is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Tolulope Ogunsina is a Playbrush co-founder. It is a dental healthtech startup that uses video games to teach children and adolescents how to brush properly. Matthäus Ittner, Paul Varga, and Tolulope Ogunsina founded the company, which had raised £3.3 million in four funding rounds prior to being selected for the Black Founders Fund. Playbrush is also headquartered in London.
Tai Alegbe is Contingent's first black co-founder. The London-based startup's product is an AI-powered supply chain monitoring platform. It raised £1.7 million in 2020 to accelerate the development of its product. Rajpal Wilkhu, along with Alegbe, is a co-founder of the company.
Kenny Alegbe is one of HomeHero's co-founders. Alegbe and Mooktakim Ahmed founded the company in 2017 with the goal of improving the lives of residents and property managers. It accomplishes this by aggregating various services into a single app for users. The services offered range from bill setup to reporting a broken boiler. The startup is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu is the founder and CEO of Define, a legal technology company. Define makes it simple to create, comprehend, and read legal documents in a fraction of the time it would take to do so manually. Feargus Macdaeid and Nnamdi Emelifeonwu founded it. Additionally, it is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Other benefits attached to the funding
Each of the 30 startups selected for the list will receive up to $100,000 in non-equity funding and up to $120,000 in advertising grants. In addition, they will each have $100,000 in Cloud credits.
Google announced the funds in October 2020 and over 800 companies have applied since then. They were then narrowed down to 100 applicants, who were interviewed by the technology company. From this smaller pool, an even smaller group of 30 startups were chosen as the fund's final winners.
Apart from the six startups co-founded by Nigerians, the remaining 24 include Tradein, LINE, Afrocenchix, AudioMob, Augmize, Bosque, Axela Innovation, Freyda, Clustdoc, Heex Technologies, Hutch Logistics, Iknowa, Kami, Kwara, LaLaLand, Modularity Grid, Remote Coach, Robin AI, Scoodle, Suvera, Syrona Health, Vanilla Steel, Wild Radish,
Women lead 40% of these startups. According to a joint statement from Google's Head of Startups in the United Kingdom, Marta Krupinska, and Google's Head of Venture Capital and Startup Partnerships in EMEA, Rachael Palmer, this 40% diversity is intended to promote gender diversity.
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